Conversation Analysis and Classroom Interaction AKI SIEGEL AND PAUL SEEDHOUSE This entry discusses how conversation analysis (CA) has been employed to investigate inter- action which occurs in second/foreign-language (L2) classrooms. The detailed, intensive study of interaction in L2 classrooms only took off in the 1960s with the advent of audio and, later, video-recording technology. The frst wave of development in the description and analysis of L2 classroom interaction was observation or coding schemes from the 1960s. A second major development was the use of discourse analysis (DA) from the 1970s. DA uses principles and methodology typical of linguistics to analyze classroom discourse in structural-functional linguistic terms. Seedhouse (2004) suggested that DA cannot portray the fow of the interaction because it is essentially a static approach which portrays interac- tion as consisting of fxed and unidimensional coordinates on a conceptual map. Since the DA approach was developed for frst language (L1) classrooms and transferred for use in L2 classrooms, it had diffculty in portraying the extra dimension which distinguishes L2 classroom interaction from L1 classroom interaction. This is that language is the object as well as the vehicle of interaction. With the development of coding schemes and DA studies, from the 1980s, the importance of interaction as a vital element in the instructed L2 learning process became clearer. Strong interest then emerged in applying a new methodology (CA) to the description and analysis of L2 classroom interaction. CA had developed in the 1960s, had no obvious con- nection with learning, and in its genesis dealt exclusively with monolingual English data. Publications then appeared which started to address the relationship between CA and L2 classroom interaction. The overall picture of the L2 classroom which emerges from the appli- cation of a CA methodology is that it is a very complex, dynamic, and fuid interactional environment. Pedagogy and interaction are intertwined in a mutually dependent relation- ship and we must examine the minute detail of the interaction to gain a full understanding of the instructed L2 learning process. Previously, for many years, researchers in the area of language learning had shied away from examining the micro-detail of classroom interaction, regarding it as an excessively complex, heterogeneous, and particularly “messy” source of data. However, with CA it became possible to do this and studies have demonstrated that, as with conversation, there is also order at all points in L2 classroom interaction. One infuential monograph in this area of study is by Seedhouse (2004) who applied CA to an extensive and varied database of language lessons from around the world to tackle the question “How is L2 classroom interaction organized?” The main thesis is that there is a refexive relationship between pedagogy and interaction in the L2 classroom, and that this relationship is the foundation of its context-free architecture. This relationship means that, as the pedagogical focus varies, so does the organization of the interaction. How- ever, this also means that the L2 classroom has its own interactional organization which Based in part on P. Seedhouse (2012). Conversation analysis and classroom interaction. In C. A. Chapelle (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. John Wiley & Sons Inc., with permission. The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Edited by Carol A. Chapelle. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0198.pub2